On Why the Gulls Gather, and How Humanity Finally Learns Not to Account the Whole World as Its Own

— On Huang Shu-ching’s Gulls Gathering Everywhere (Penghu, Taiwan)

Written by WANG MUTI

Humanity’s greatest arrogance toward nature is not destruction, but the presumptive belief that we understand it. Destruction can still be attributed to temporary brutality, but misunderstanding runs deeper. This is because such error invariably disguises itself in the vestments of appreciation, naming, research, management, tourism, and development, deceiving humans into thinking that whatever falls under their gaze has automatically entered their order.

Consequently, islands are reduced to scenic spots, seabirds to mere imagery, cliffs to geological landforms, wind to meteorological data, and tides to timetables. The inherent dignity of the world—which exists not for humanity, nor owes humanity any justification for its existence—is slowly ground away within these layers of "understanding."

Huang Shu-ching’s Gulls Gathering Everywhere (Penghu, Taiwan), in my eyes, is precisely not a painting that simply depicts the beauty of seabirds and sea cliffs. It is a work that forces us to acknowledge a profound truth: certain lives constitute life precisely because they do not exist by human measures, nor do they live for the pleasure of human viewing.

The Geography of a Non-Human Landscape

What first causes one to pause before this painting is its vertical composition. The canvas is tall and narrow, resembling a cross-section of a coastline sculpted over eons by the wind and saturated with salt mist. The upper portion is filled with a vast expanse of pale yellow, near-ochre air—resembling mist, light, or a sky whose boundaries have been worn thin by the sea gale. The right side and mid-ground of the canvas present layers of rock faces and grassy slopes. The texture of the stone is exceptionally meticulous, revealing both fissures and severe weathering. It feels not as though the artist is mimicking the earth's surface on paper, but as if the earth itself is turning over its pages of age layer by layer for us to see.

The palette is thoroughly restrained, eschewing flashy hues to capture the specific island climate of Penghu through a slow accumulation of ochre-grey, ink-brown, pale green, and earth-yellow: a dry wind laden with salt, a salt mist infused with light, and within that light, always a hint of the bitterness of coastal air. The flocks of gulls are distributed across several protruding rock platforms—some perching, some facing one another, some opening their beaks, some extending their wings, and others precisely at the moment of taking flight. They form an organic rhythm: not a staged choreography upon a theater platform, but life performing its most familiar actions upon a terrain suited to its existence.

I have always harbored a deep disbelief toward works that render nature as a "scenery" meant for human admiration. The very term scenery easily takes the side of humanity, as if the ultimate purpose of mountains, seas, birds, and beasts were merely to become raw material for human consumption. Yet, the most precious quality of Huang Shu-ching’s work lies in its complete withdrawal of humanity from the canvas. Even indirect human traces are virtually absent. There are no harbors, no fishing boats, no boardwalks, no viewing platforms—no civilizational apparatuses to serve as a springboard for the viewer’s self-insertion.

This deletion is not a vacancy; it is a methodology. It is not an omission, but a stance. For when humanity is absent from the canvas, the birds finally cease to be birds painted merely for human eyes, and the cliff ceases to be a mere backdrop to set off the birds. Each stands firmly on its own terms, establishing its meaning within their mutual relationship. This brings to mind that critical statement by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac:

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

This statement has long been treated as a maxim of environmental ethics. Yet, the more I read it, the more I feel its true warning lies not in the word "beauty," but in the word "community." The gulls are not decorative accoutrements to a landscape, but part of the community; the rocky cliffs are not a backdrop, but part of the community. The sea gale, the tides, the small fish, the reef crevices, the breeding season, the silence, and the distance—all are inextricably part of the community. If a single link is missing, the gulls will no longer "gather everywhere." And if the gulls cease to come, what we lose is not merely a few birds, but an entire set of living conditions, the living capacity of an entire place.

The Ecological Significance of Empty Space

Rachel Carson once reminded us:

"In nature, nothing exists alone."

I often reflect that this statement carries an especially severe weight when applied to an island ecosystem. An island exposes the fragility of all relationships far earlier than a continent does. An alien disturbance, a coastal engineering project, an onslaught of plastic pollution, a shift in acoustic frequency, or an inappropriate tourist pathway can disrupt the equilibrium much faster on an island than on a vast landmass. This is particularly true for Penghu. The island appears expansive, yet its carrying capacity is strictly limited; the habitat appears desolate, yet it fears nothing more than being misconstrued as "empty land" and subsequently occupied.

The brilliance of Huang Shu-ching’s canvas lies in the fact that she does not paint the sea cliff as an exotic marvel to be conquered; rather, she paints it as a place that needs to be left blank, preserved, and yielded. The vast, light-colored empty spaces in the painting are not merely liubai (negative space) in the aesthetic tradition of ink wash painting; they constitute an emptiness of ecological significance. It is an emptiness where the wind can flow, where birds can circle, and where life is not forced by every inch of land to convert to human utility. What we lack most today in our relationship with the environment is precisely this comprehension: emptiness is not waste; emptiness is frequently the habitat itself. When Arne Naess formulated Deep Ecology, he repeatedly argued that protecting nature solely from the perspective of human welfare is ultimately insufficient. What we require is a deeper self-understanding—an expansion of the self from a narrow human individual into an "ecological self" co-constituted with other life forms. I dare not say that every viewer standing before this painting is prepared to embrace such an ideology, but Huang Shu-ching’s work undeniably accomplishes something similar visually: it makes it incredibly difficult for the viewer to place themselves at the center.

No element within the canvas is designed to guide you into becoming the dominant subject. On the contrary, the entire composition pushes you into a position of profound humility. You are not the master; you are merely permitted to look on. You are not the inventor of meaning; you are simply a temporary witness to how this flock of birds lives according to its own rhythms. This manner of viewing transcends mere aesthetics; it is an ethics. It demands that we elevate "liking nature" into a "willingness to allow nature to exist independent of us." This brings to mind Val Plumwood’s critique of anthropocentrism. Plumwood pointed out that one of the most deeply entrenched errors of modern civilization is the dualistic splitting of human/nature, culture/wildness, and subject/object into sets of seemingly natural oppositions, invariably prioritizing the human, the cultural, and the subjective. This division not only damages the environment but also impoverishes humanity by severing our deeper interdependence with the world.

The brilliance of Huang Shu-ching’s work lies in its total refusal to rely on such dualisms to validate itself. The birds are not symbols of "wildness" painted to satisfy the fantasies of civilized urbanites, nor are the cliffs "wasteland" waiting to be named and utilized. Every element in the painting seems to declare: We existed prior to you, and we have no need to justify ourselves through you. If a viewer can accept this, they will understand that a truly mature environmental humanity does not turn nature into a subject matter for human expression, but teaches the humanities to restrain themselves in the presence of nature.

Staying with the Multi-Species Trouble

I am particularly fond of the painting's emphasis on the "flock" rather than the solitary "individual." To paint a lone bird easily lapses into cheap lyricism; to paint a flock immediately steers the discourse toward sociality, breeding grounds, interactive rhythms, and collective behavior. The title of the work is equally marvelous: the core of Gulls Gathering Everywhere lies not only in the "gulls," but in the word "everywhere." "Everywhere" implies that this is not a chance encounter, but a stable return; it is not a isolated performance, but the unfolding of life itself.

This reminds me of what Donna Haraway terms "staying with the trouble." One of Haraway’s meanings is that we can no longer comprehend the world through a single-species, single-hero narrative; we must learn to confront actual entanglements—multi-species, interdependence, co-existence, vulnerability, trouble, and responsibility. Shifting this perspective to Huang Shu-ching’s canvas, one realizes that this flock of terns is not a natural spectacle, but concrete evidence that a multi-species world is still functioning properly for the time being. Their very presence constitutes an ecological status report: the sea can still feed them, the cliffs can still harbor them, the wind can still carry them, and the locality has not yet completely driven them away.

In this regard, I am willing to argue that this painting is actually a gentle icon of anti-development. It does not shout, it offers no explicit accusations, and it does not fill the canvas with trash, construction machinery, tourist crowds, or habitat destruction. Yet, precisely because it paints a relatively serene and complete coastal habitat with such immense conviction, the work itself becomes a highly restrained, fiercely firm statement on conservation. The deepest strength of the environmental humanities does not always lie in exposing catastrophe; sometimes, it lies in allowing humanity to glimpse a wholeness that has not yet been entirely lost, thereby generating the desire to protect it.

This recalls the "Imperative of Responsibility" emphasized by Hans Jonas: in an era of expanding technological civilization, human ethics must not only be responsible to the humans of the present, but must also remain accountable to the future conditions of life. That these birds perch upon the rocks today does not guarantee they can do so tomorrow. If we cannot preserve such habitats for the future, then today’s aesthetic appreciation is merely a belated elegy. Only when art moves humanity from mere praise to responsibility does it truly fulfill its contemporary mission.

Conclusion

Technically, the medium of ink and color on paper is utilized with exceptional discretion in this work. The texture of the rock face combines fine line drawing with bleeding washes, preserving the structural brushwork (gufa) of traditional ink painting while masterfully rendering the dry, peeling, and flaky weathered quality of marine erosion. The green of the grassy slopes is not vibrant, but bears a muted, matte dullness caused by the constant assault of salt and wind. This detail is remarkably accurate, for the green along an actual island coast is never the lush, plump green of the inland; it is a low-profile color of life left behind after being continuously scraped and ground by intense sunlight, salt mist, and strong gales. The plumage of the birds is rendered in white, grey, black, and a touch of warm yellow—un-exaggerated, un-pandering, yet perfectly echoing the vast tones of soil and stone. This restraint endows the work with a rare moral aesthetics: it does not attract through dazzling displays, but builds its persuasiveness through precision, endurance, stillness, and absolute sincerity. This attitude is precisely what ecological themes deserve. For the dignity of the environment does not need to be constantly rendered as a spectacle; more often than not, it is within this quiet and steadfast depiction that the world recovers its original thickness.

I have never believed that what we truly need to learn is merely "how to look at a painting," but rather "how to slightly correct ourselves after looking at a painting." Huang Shu-ching’s work acts as a rare mirror for me: it does not reflect a person’s face, but reflects a person’s rightful place. Standing before the canvas, I suddenly feel that humanity does not always need to live as the center of the world, nor must we always act as the world's ultimate interpreter. Sometimes, we simply need to acknowledge: the sea cliff has its own vicissitudes, the flock of birds has its own order, the wind has its own path, and if we truly respect this entirety, we should learn to possess less and yield more; to translate less of the world into our own language, and allow the world to maintain more of its own silence and rhythm. Such learning is less about appreciating nature and more about receiving a re-education.

Therefore, when I look at Gulls Gathering Everywhere, what I ultimately read is not mere poetry, but something far scarcer: a restrained sense of civilization. A truly civilized society does not lie in turning every coast into a resource site that can be accessed, named, and developed, but in knowing which places ought to be left entirely to non-human life. True maturity is not measured by how much of the world humanity has mastered, but by whether humans are willing to acknowledge that the world possesses dimensions that do not belong to them. The reason this work deserves to be remembered long into the future is that it does not teach humans to covet a landscape, but teaches humans to abdicate their thrones; it does not instruct us to be intoxicated by the visual pleasure of nature, but teaches us to comprehend that if nature is truly worthy of love, we must first allow it the freedom of not having to justify itself to us in every single matter.

Summary Note: Huang Shu-ching’s Gulls Gathering Everywhere (Penghu, Taiwan) utilizes ink and color on paper to depict a habitat landscape of sea cliffs and congregating terns. However, the work’s true focus is not the simple aesthetic appeal of the birds, but the existential conditions of the coastal habitat as a multi-species community. The vast negative space forming the mist and wind field, the weathered geological textures of the layered rock faces, and the collective rhythm of the flock together constitute a visual arena that completely decentralizes the human viewer. Drawing upon Aldo Leopold’s land ethics, the composition presents not a romanticized landscape, but a temporary manifestation of the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. Rachel Carson’s dictum that "in nature, nothing exists alone" further elucidates the profound interdependence between the gulls, the cliffs, the tides, the wind direction, and the island environment. Furthermore, through the lens of Arne Naess’s Deep Ecology and Val Plumwood’s critique of anthropocentrism, this masterpiece reminds the viewer that a mature love for nature requires abdication rather than possession; it demands preserving the integrity of the habitat as a home for non-human life rather than converting it into a tourist destination. On the whole, Gulls Gathering Everywhere does not merely showcase the restrained beauty of Penghu's coastal ecology, but stands as a mature creation possessed of explicit depth in the environmental humanities.